Foreclosures lead to a rise in abandoned pets

The ever-worsening story of foreclosures in America now counts among its victims the family dog, the pet cat and even the farmer's horse.

Animal rescue volunteers say they are seeing more animals abandoned or dropped off at shelters as families are forced to move from homes that they can no longer afford.

"I'm getting skinny horses in here that people have walked away from," said Drew Fitzpatrick, director of the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation in Zimmerman, Minn.

It used to be that for every abandoned horse there was a story of mental illness, divorce or cancer of its owner, said Fitzpatrick.

"Now it's bankruptcy and ARM foreclosure. Rural America is really starting to get punched."

Nationally some 2 million Americans are headed into foreclosure because of subprime loans. No one keeps records of foreclosure abandonment, but many shelters said the problem is growing.

The Humane Society of the United States issued a statement this month urging pet owners to take their animals with them when they move.

Of the 150 animals turned in during the past two months at the Rice County Humane Society at least 51 were because of foreclosure.

"We have owners who are so upset that they have to give up their animals because of foreclosure," said Michelle DeWeese, who works at the shelter. One returned nearly every day for two weeks before her black Labrador, named Sarabi, was adopted.

The stories of woe get worse: A family lost its home in a foreclosure, then its business in a bankruptcy. The final blow: leaving the family dogs of 8 and 9 years at the local shelter before moving to California to live with a relative.

"The family was absolutely in tears," said Sadie Wakal, director of the Safe Sanctuary in Faribault, Minn. "Everyone came to say goodbye. It was like they were leaving their children behind."

That story had a happy ending. The yellow and black Labs, named Toby and Mocha, found good homes, Toby to a family with a small child and Mocha to a woman who lived alone and now dotes on her dog.

But the number of animals coming in due to the foreclosure crisis has pushed the shelter to its limit, said Wakal.

"We're foster based, so we're stretched for foster homes. We're begging and pleading and poking dogs in corners."

The problem has been exceedingly acute for horse owners, who were already facing high feed costs because of rising commodity prices and the recent elimination of horse slaughterhouses in America. That market -- a federal ban recently closed the last three such slaughterhouses in the United States -- once provided horse owners with an option that paid about $600 per horse, when there was nowhere else to turn.

Reports have cropped up of horses wandering the Florida Everglades and coal mines in Kentucky, where owners too poor to care for them have set them free to forage on their own.

Fitzpatrick, of the Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation, said she took a call this week from the sheriff in Morrison County in central Minnesota, who reported a herd of horses running free in the area. "He just said it looks like another foreclosure," she said.

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